What if Healing is actually possible? What if Healing is our birthright, something our Spirit knows instinctively? What if our Ancestors are guiding us to places where we can find Healing and care? What if connecting with our Creativity, authentically in community, can guide us back to ourselves? What if we are connected to All Beings in a Shared World and All Beings are connected to us?
The LIFE as Medicine Certificate Program – Healing our Fragmentation – ReImagining our InterdepenDance is a Collective Healing experience grounded in expressive Arts, interwoven with profound Indigenous Teachings, Ceremony, and Song. Community connection is deepened to support Healing, self-discovery, and meaningful relationships within our Circle and with Mother Earth and All Our Relations.
From March to June, eighteen participants journeyed with LIFE as Medicine through experiential workshops that engaged in Creativity as a Pathway to deeper understandings of ourselves, our journeys, and the ways we relate in our Shared World. Taking part in creating Eco Bricolage, Smoke Art, Painting with natural materials, Clay Play, Collage, Music, Movement, Meditation, Storytelling, Ceremony and Sharing Circle, we come to see that our Art can often reveal what words cannot. A participant describes what being part of the LIFE as Medicine Program felt like:
“….Taking part of an actual community brings me that strength to stand on the present, but also thinking joyfully in the future, which I didn’t do for a long time. You know, like I was in the present but struggling to survive… and now I have had this opportunity. To be honest, I have never felt that for a long time. I could remember like slices of happiness in my childhood…… I mean, I felt important. I felt seen, and that profound joy I have felt it here! That’s that’s something. Is this the most important thing for me!”
Another participant spoke about “the head and the heart” in learning. Rather than simply gaining knowledge, they found themselves engaged in a living practice that encouraged self-exploration and reflection on their place in the world, their relationship with nature, and their connection to a community of colleagues and Elders. The creative practices, woven together with music, prayer, and meditation, helped them listen more deeply to their own inner wisdom.
For another participant, the program offered something they had been searching for most of their life: a genuine sense of belonging.
In the Eastern Door our creative process: Flower Power, became an opportunity for all to more deeply understand mental wellness and the importance of Balance. In the South Door, a Smoke Art exercise led to a profound shift in how one participant understood their father, replacing years of anger with compassion and appreciation. Rather than simply creating an image, they discovered that Art revealed insights waiting beneath the surface, allowing old stories to be re-examined through a new lens.
From the Western Door we painted and poured with Water and Natural Pigments that opened our Hearts to emotional Healing. In the Northern Door while working with Clay we invited reflection on generations of Ancestors and the pain and the Gifts we inherit from our lineage. Through shaping the Clay, emerging themes of identity, resilience, love, and the ways each generation can create greater freedom for the next. What we created was not only a Sculpture but a renewed appreciation for Strengths carried through our Ancestral lineage and within ourselves.
Dr Fyre Jean Graveline and several Collaborators, including GrandMothers, arts therapists and community organizers, co-Inspire Collective Healing while holding Safe Enough Space to surface and contain individual and collective trauma. Central to this experience was the sense of psychological and spiritual safety cultivated within the group. Participants spoke of feeling deeply supported by one another and held with compassion by the GrandMothers whose presence created space for whatever needed to emerge. Participants gathered in a Healing Space grounded in Respect, Kindness, Cultural Humility, and Reciprocity. We witnessed one another’s stories, celebrated each other’s growth, and discovered that healing happens in layers, and in relationship.
All Healing Heals All.
As one participant beautifully expressed:
“I cannot see my life now without being part of this community. It has brought so much joy and so much hope to me… It’s been a long time since I’ve felt hope or had Elders there for me. This has been a turning point in my life.”
All LIFE as Medicine Programming, including the InterDepenDance Certificate Program, weaves together Ceremony and Ritual, expressive Arts, Indigenous Knowledges, Music, Meditation, and Heartfelt Community. We create Healing Spaces for participants to reconnect with themselves, honour their stories, and imagine new possibilities for the future.
Please enjoy our beautiful ART SHOW here:
We invite you to join us for our next InterDependence Certificate Offering– for Seven Saturdays starting January 16 through to April 17.
